Note: The CBO unemployment gap is the civilian unemployment rate less the CBO estimate of the NAIRU. Difficulty in finding jobs
equals proportion of households believing jobs are hard to get minus proportion believing jobs are plentiful, as reported in the Conference
Board survey. Ease in filling jobs equals 100 minus the percentage of firms in the NFIB survey reporting that jobs are difficult to fill.
Both survey measures are demeaned and rescaled by their standard deviations.

As shown in the figure, shaded bars indicate periods of recession as defined by the National Bureau of Economic Research (1990:Q3-1991:Q1,
2001:Q1-2001:Q4, and 2007:Q4-2009:Q2).